Sermons from First Congregational Church of Southington

Weeping and Hope Lenten Midweek Worship John 11.1-45 March 25, 2020 The Rev. Dr. Ronald B. Brown

††††††† John 11.1-45

††††††† I. About twenty years ago, the world lost an extraordinary young man, one who loved. I only got to know him after his death. As I spoke with his mother and aunt the afternoon after he was murdered, that is what that is what they told me. Nick had an extraordinary ability to love. He loved his family; he loved his friends; he loved his dogs—Nick, only 20 years old, had an extraordinary ability to love.

He had been murdered in a drug deal gone wrong—senseless, tragic—and the young adults gathered in a packed room at the funeral home the afternoon of his funeral service had so many questions. I wasn’t sure what I could say to them. His mother asked me to read part of the scripture we just heard from the Gospel of John about Jesus weeping. It was the right story for us to hear that that afternoon. Lazarus has died. His sisters, Mary and Martha, do not understand. Martha, in fact, expresses misunderstanding on behalf of us all, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Nick had a sparkle in his eyes. He was a star on the football team. The room lit up when he walked in. He was full of life, loyal, protective of those whom he loved. He walked with his mother through three years of painful treatment for leukemia. He would bring her a new puppy after every hospital stay. Nick never left the house without giving his mother a kiss. He was giving and loving, strong-minded and curious, especially about religion.

The people there that day felt like Martha felt, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus was moved by Mary and Martha’s grief, and by the mourning of all the friends who had come to comfort them, something extraordinary happens.

Jesus weeps.

It is the only time in the entire Bible where we see Jesus crying. Not even as he faces his own death does he shed tears. At the news of the death of his friend, he weeps.

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I said to the folks the afternoon of Nick’s funeral, when Nick died, Jesus wept. He sees your grief, and feels you anger, and Jesus is weeping today too.

II. Why do such things happen?

Is this for God’s glory? You could read this scripture passage that way.

I’m not so sure.

These questions will be on our minds over the next two weeks as we tell the story of Jesus’ passion again, even if we can’t be in the same room to hear it.

Death is not something that we particularly like to think about. Filmmaker Woody Allen once said, “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But death is part of life.

We know death. We have adjusted to it, accommodated it, tried to normalize it. We live in a world filled with death, with suffering. We have to adjust, don’t we?

God, it would seem, is not as ready to accommodate death as we are.

What Jesus says intrigues me. He says that what is happening to Lazarus is for God’s glory. I think of God as being opposed to death, fighting against it. It would never occur to me that death might somehow lead to God’s glory, that suffering might serve God’s purpose.

But the writer of John calls what happens in the graveyard that day a sign. John doesn’t see the astonishing things Jesus does as miracles but prefers to call them signs. As we walk through John’s gospel, each sign paints a clearer picture of God than the one before it. Last week the read about the sign of being able to see when Jesus healed a man blind from birth. The sign apparent at Lazarus’ tomb is that God brings life where there was once death.

God can do that, and only God can do that, bring life from death. That is what Easter is all about. That is the good news.

But the bad news is that we still have to walk through the graveyard to get there. Good Friday still comes before Easter Day. Crucifixion still precedes resurrection. The world is still full of suffering. That is the bad news.

That is the news that Martha and Mary discovered when their brother, Lazarus, got sick. They sent word to Jesus, but he did not come right away.

Lazarus dies.

They put him in the tomb and seal it with a rock.

They grieve.

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They had many reasons to grieve. How could God’s glory possibly come out of such grief?

III. When Jesus finally comes, he asks Martha an odd question. “Do you believe in resurrection?” Martha says she believes, but true to form in the Gospel of John she misunderstands.

Jesus keeps you guessing.

She believes in resurrection in the last day, but Lazarus has been dead in the tomb for four days. As the coroner in the Wizard of Oz says, “he’s not only merely dead, he's really most sincerely dead.” By now there would be a smell.

“Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” And, sure enough! God’s glory is seen. Lazarus comes walking out of the tomb!

But there is a part of this story that has always amazed me. It is verse 35, the second verse in the Bible (after John 3.16) that I ever memorized, “Jesus wept.” At least that’s what the old King James says. Our translation says, “Jesus began to weep.” Either way, it is the shortest verse in the Bible.

I have come to believe, over 30 plus years of ministry, that it is also one of the most important verses in the Bible.

Why did Jesus weep when he knew that Lazarus would live again?

I believe that Jesus weeps because he cannot stop Martha and Mary’s suffering. He cannot stop our suffering. Sickness, even among the faithful, causes great pain … and so Jesus weeps.

How could it be for God’s glory?

IV. Some years ago a member of the church I then served asked me to pray for her friend, Sarah. Sarah was sixteen years old at the time, and had just been diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare and particularly deadly form of bone cancer. Several of us prayed for her. She received a prayer shawl knitted and blessed by our prayer shawl ministry.

I would never even suggest that God was responsible for Sarah’s cancer. God does not cause suffering. One of the most difficult lessons I learned from my own mother’s death from breast cancer 41 years ago was that we live in a broken world where disease scurries about randomly.

But I learned, as I got to know Sarah through the stories others shared with me, that this young woman possessed a spiritual maturity well beyond her sixteen years. The glory of God permeated her life. She was a gift and a sign to her family and friends, and to all who had the fortune to know her.

Sarah always seemed to find something for which to be grateful. When her hair fell out as a side effect of the painful treatments she had to endure, she got a wig. But she hated it and wore it only on

www.fccsouthington.org Weeping and Hope March 25, 2020 Sermon Page 4 of 5 The Rev. Dr. Ronald B. Brown dress-up day, as part of her Cyndi Lauper costume. During Spirit Week she painted her scalp the class color: bright red, with ‘03 on her cheeks for the year she planned to graduate. “Not having hair saves me 10 days of sleep a year because I don’t have to get up so much earlier to wash it and stuff,” she told her school newspaper, Carpe Diem. Sarah missed a third of her classes but maintained straight A’s. She asked her dad to buy stronger plastic bags in case she felt nauseated at school, so the custodians wouldn’t have a mess to clean up. “Grace” is the word her principal used to describe her. “I think her courage has given others that kind of courage.” Words cannot describe the gifts of hope and love she gave her family.

Many of us prayed for Sarah, but our prayers were not answered as we had hoped. After months of struggle and weeks of intense pain, Sarah died. Sarah told her father that she wanted her memorial service to be short, and for a lot of people to be there. She got one of her wishes.

But don’t think for a minute that death won.

Sarah’s father, in a courageous message sent shortly after she died to those of us praying for her, wrote,

I have one final thing to say. Though the pain I feel will never leave me, I hope that I will always be able to remember that at no time have Sarah or [we] ever been alone. At moments of agony and … hurt beyond description, my first impulse has often been to ask, “Where is God in all of this?” A large part of the answer is, “Look around at the countless host of people who have lifted you up and carried you, in prayer and presence, through the valley of the shadow.” When the pain and the questions overwhelm me, may God grant me the grace to remember Sarah, always grateful for any kindness and always facing the future with unceasing optimism, hope and love.

V. That is what the story of Lazarus is about!

That is how God’s glory can be known even in a broken world, even in the valley of the shadow!

Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb. And out Lazarus comes! But Jesus doesn’t leave it at that and let the folks grieving for Lazarus think the work was all done. Lazarus is still in his grave clothes. “Unbind him,” Jesus commands, “and let him go.”

The mourners, the ones who suffer outside the tomb, may not wallow in their grief. “Roll up your sleeves and get rid of those grave clothes!” Jesus says. The only way we can beat suffering and death is if we stick together, be a community.

I truly believe, with all my heart, that Jesus hates death, but he cannot stop it. Jesus abhors suffering, but there is still suffering in the world. Jesus is on his way to the cross so that by dying he will defeat death forever and by rising give life to us all.

But even though Jesus has brought life and immortality to light, overwhelmed the sting and victory of death, seventeen-year-old girls sometimes still die—

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Even though God’s love us to the core of our being diseases like COVID-19 still frighten us and cause us to have to hunker down and change so many of the ways we live our lives. It’s scary!

Jesus still weeps. But here’s the ting. There is weeping, but there is hope—always hope.

I think that is why God gave us the church. There is suffering in the world; there is suffering in our lives.

God knows that there always will be.

So, God gives us each other, to unbind and let go, for support when times are hard and it seems that we cannot go on—support in the midst of a suffering world. That is the glory of God. That is what the community of church is all about. That is what my heart most desires for First Congregational Church. Whether we are together, or whether we have to care for each other from a distance.

Jesus said to Martha when he came to comfort her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says to the grieving Martha.

Death does not disappear—

suffering does not go away.

But Jesus left us each other, the church.

Within this community he leads us through the graveyard and right out the other side.

Weeping and hope … for the glory of God.